Post Chalmers' eerie past comes to light

Published Aug 10, 2007

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By Louise Flanagan

A woman wailed in renewed anguish when investigators showed her charred bone fragments, battered house keys and burnt tyre remnants - all clues to a 25-year-old murder.

Boniwe Bhelwana had to be comforted by friends, a small group of people who travelled together about 300km from Port Elizabeth to a remote farm in a valley near Cradock to see where their anti-apartheid activist relatives had been murdered by security police officers.

National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) investigators showed the families the fragments and artefacts, all recovered at Post Chalmers, a former police station used for illegal operations by Port Elizabeth security police in the 1980s.

In April 1982, student activists Siphiwo Mthimkulu and Topsy Madaka - Bhelwana's partner and the father of her child - were killed there.

On a bitterly cold winter's night in May 1985, Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation activists Sipho Hashe, Champion Galela and Qaqawuli Godolozi - the Pebco Three - met the same fate.

On Monday, the NPA, helped by South African and international experts, returned to Post Chalmers to excavate, after first identifying human remains there in mid-July. On Thursday, families were shown the site and what was unearthed.

The families were initially silent when the remains were unveiled.

"Burnt tyres" read the label on one tray.

"Coal and wood" read another.

"Burnt bone" stated labels on three more trays.

"Items recovered" included a battered watch strap, coins and even house keys.

Then the questions started.

Can you test the bones for DNA? several asked.

Investigators said they might be able to, as these were bigger fragments than those found last month.

The families sang, prayed and thanked the investigators.

"We say thanks very much," veteran activist Ivy Gcina told NPA missing persons unit head Madeleine Fullard.

"It's your right to have this information, even if it is painful," said Fullard.

The team showed the families the site where experts quietly dug and sifted soil all day, where their men are believed to have died.

A second pyre site was found on Wednesday, with unidentifiable bone fragments, and by midday on Thursday the first clearly identifiable human remains were found on that site - a charred adult tooth from root to crown.

"This is human," said forensic archaeologist Claudia Bisso, of the Argentine forensic anthropology team.

Bone fragments found at this pyre site would have to be assessed in the laboratory to see if they were human, said Bisso.

Another pyre site has already yielded many bits of human bone.

The tooth was found by University of Cape Town archaeologist Dave Halkett.

This week, the team emptied all the septic tanks on the farm, sifting through thousands of litres of raw sewage, drying bucketloads on shadecloth spread over metal bedsteads.

"Then we picked through it by hand," said Fullard.

The killers may have thought they had destroyed all the evidence, but the investigators have found plenty in the tanks, the pyre sites and surrounds.

They've collected hundreds of kilograms of evidence - burnt material, human bones and battered artefacts.

Some evidence contradicts their killers' testimony.

Police officers Gerrit Erasmus, Nic van Rensburg, Hermanus du Plessis and Gideon Nieuwoudt received amnesty for the Mthimkulu and Madaka killings.

Du Plessis and police informant Piet Mogoai got amnesty for the Pebco Three killings, but others were refused.

In 2004, the NPA started charging Nieuwoudt - now dead - Sakkie van Zyl and Johannes Koole with the Pebco Three killings, but this stalled, pending a review of their amnesty refusal.

Amnesty applications contained claims that the victims' remains were dumped in the Fish River and denials that tyres were used on the all-night pyres - but investigators have found human remains on site and evidence of burnt tyres.

Evidence indicates the victims were killed on site, burnt and their remains then shovelled into the septic tanks.

Why the killers chose Post Chalmers still puzzles University of the Western Cape historian Nicky Rousseau, who is on contract to the NPA team.

At the time it had already been abandoned as a police station, although it was still state-owned. Perhaps the Port Elizabeth police liked the excuse of being away from their offices all day.

One even took his son-in-law along.

Now it's a farm, the prison cells converted into an abattoir.

Farm owner Andre van Heerden has let the NPA do their work and is open to discussions about a memorial.

Questions remain, and on Thursday the families were reluctant to talk about their trip.

"The whole process has been satisfactory and we are quite satisfied as families that we can gather here and undergo the whole process," said Godolozi's son Mkhontowesizwe, 23.

He said the families had decided not to comment further until the case was finalised.

Meanwhile, the NPA team continues to dig, sift and sort.

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